student rights

[Yvonscott]

exactly where does the rights of a middle school student become valid? My teen's cellphone was confiscated by a teacher and then the teacher went through the phone looking at text messages. Is that legal?

Hi,

The exact same thing happened at my son's school although in this case the student whose cell phone was confiscated was selling prescription drugs to other students and he was arrested as was some other student's including my son. I was absolutely certain it had to be illegal for them to read the text messages but apparantly (according to my son's lawyer) they are allowed to IF it is a private school (which is what my son's school is). If your son goes to a public school than it is a violation of the 4th ammendment and there are cases out there where the schools have been held liable for doing this. If you google the internet you might find some of those cases but I would talk to a lawyer because this is outrageous and it appears that it happens all over the country every day.

This also happened at my daughter's school and the principal was going through the kid's phone and in the process left on the internet browser and there was a several hundred dollar bill for internet usage! You can bet the school had to pay the phone bill for that one.